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EU's Myanmar move risks ASEM
ties
By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY -
When the European Union began converting its lapsed
communist neighbors during the great drive to the east
in the late 1990s, the bureaucratic army undertook a
simple marketing exercise. Aspiring members of the
expanding bloc had to put their eligibility on the line
by completing a political and economic checklist that
tested their willingness to meet required standards of
reform in government, business and personal freedoms.
A decade on, the Europeans are seeking to apply
the same principles in their dealings with Asian trading
partners, though on a more selective basis - and it's
not going down well with the Asians, a fact that could
cost the Europeans dearly.
In April the EU
informed Asian members of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)
consultative body that Myanmar was not welcome to join
until it mended its ways by freeing detained opposition
leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi and opening a political
dialogue with her oppressed National League for
Democracy (NLD). Buckling to domestic political
pressures, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands
proposed a set of benchmarks modeled on two human-rights
covenants drawn up in Copenhagen that would in effect
set a timetable for Myanmar's transition to democracy.
The formula worked in Europe but has brought
only grief in the Asia-Pacific region. While few were
surprised when it was rejected out of hand by Yangon,
the depth of resistance by Myanmar's partners in the
10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
was somewhat less anticipated. Seven existing ASEAN
members of ASEM said they would block the inclusion of
the EU's 10 new eastern states unless the Europeans
backed down. But they couldn't.
Boxed into a
corner by the dogmatic British and Dutch, the EU was
forced to pull out of two high-level ASEM economic
sessions in July and September last year, and gave
notice that it would probably not attend a summit of
national leaders in Hanoi in October.
Suddenly a
business relationship worth almost US$500 billion is
starting to look shaky.
"By insisting, the
European Union now risks allowing [Myanmar] to turn into
another Zimbabwe standoff, with the EU indirectly
strengthening rather than weakening the country's
leadership in Myanmar's transition and allowing Myanmar
to play out the EU and its Asian partners against each
other," said Erik Friberg, a researcher at Tufts
University in the United States.
"Just as it was
a miscalculation on the EU side to believe that South
Africa's President [Thabo] Mbeki ... would be inclined
and have the leverage to influence changes in Zimbabwe's
policies, it is misguided to believe that increased EU
pressure on other ASEAN member states will make a
significant impact on their policies toward Myanmar."
The biannual ASEM summits are the prestige event
of a forum that has made significant, if largely
unpublicized, progress in bridging the Asian and
European positions in such diverse areas as trade and
investment, security tensions, transnational crime and
the alleviation of poverty.
Established in 1996
on a joint initiative by Singapore and France, ASEM was
originally envisaged by the EU as a counterpoint to the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) caucus, which
gave the United States a handy edge in trade dealings
with newly industrialized Asian states.
ASEM's
10 Asian members - seven from ASEAN, plus Japan, South
Korea and China - are the EU's second-biggest export
market worldwide and supply the bulk of European
imports. Two-way trade is worth $450 billion a year and
investment a further $20 billion, putting a steep price
on the EU's political principles.
Some members
of the bloc evidently agree, as the UK in particular has
come under intense pressure to compromise so that the
summit, which will confirm a range of cooperative
economic ventures, can be salvaged. The Republic of
Ireland has already broken ranks. To the EU's acute
embarrassment, Dublin established diplomatic relations
with Myanmar on a non-resident basis in February just as
Ireland was about to assume the presidency of the
Council of Europe.
France, never wholly
comfortable with the ostracization of Yangon, has also
weakened, dispatching Minister of State for Foreign
Affairs Renaud Muselier to Singapore last month in the
search of a breakthrough. And the Netherlands agreed in
mid-July to send former foreign minister and EU
Commissioner Hans van den Broek on a shuttle run to
consult with government leaders in Bangkok, Hanoi,
Beijing and Tokyo.
Asia's position is also far
from concrete, with the more authoritarian countries
unsurprisingly taking a harder line than those with
entrenched democracies, which have less to fear from EU
scrutiny. Cambodia and Laos, the other ASEAN
non-members, have even said they may boycott ASEM if
Myanmar is left out.
ASEAN has conveniently
forgotten that Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos are not
members of APEC either as the US, like the EU, insists
that states should be judged on their merits without
gaining automatic entry.
There is also a
precedent within ASEAN for withholding membership. In
1997 Cambodia was rebuffed because of internal political
strife, eventually joining two years after Laos and
Myanmar. The preconditions imposed on Cambodia? For the
sake of regional stability, Phnom Penh had to
demonstrate that it would hold free and fair elections
and agree to establish a coalition government that
encompassed all political factions.
On purely
economic terms, the excluded Asian countries have little
to offer ASEM. Their combined trade with the EU amounted
to a modest $1.5 billion in 2002, the most recent year
that data were released.
Myanmar's trade ties
are being squeezed by economic sanctions and visa curbs
that have been applied progressively by the EU since
1996. Preferential trade benefits were withdrawn in 1997
and the European assets of regime members were frozen
last January.
There will be much more to lose if
the Europeans elect to apply the same standards in their
dealings with autocratic China, Vietnam, Singapore and
Brunei. They probably won't, as these states would
present tougher targets than vulnerable Myanmar.
The most likely outcome to a standoff that
neither side had wanted is that Myanmar will be granted
a form of second-tier membership of ASEM that doesn't
require European leaders to do photo calls alongside its
tainted generals.
Of course, Yangon could loosen
the screws by freeing Aung San Suu Kyi or bringing the
NLD into its much-derided constitutional convention, as
a precursor to free elections, thus offering everyone a
face-saver. But not even the Europeans have this on
their checklist.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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